Rare earths are a series of chemical elements found in the Earth’s crust that are vital to many modern technologies, including consumer electronics, computers and networks, communications, clean energy, advanced transportation, health care, environmental mitigation, national defense, and many others. Because of their unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties, these elements help make many technologies perform with reduced weight, reduced emissions, and energy consumption; or give them greater efficiency, performance, miniaturization, speed, durability, and thermal stability.

There are 17 elements that are considered to be rare earth elements—15 elements in the lanthanide series and two additional elements that share similar chemical properties. The group consists of yttrium and the 15 lanthanide elements (lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium). Scandium is found in most rare earth element deposits and is sometimes classified as a rare earth element. Rare earth metals are classified as heavy rare earth metals (yttrium, gadolinium, europium, terbium, holmium, dysprosium, thulium, erbium, ytterbium, and lutetium) and light rare earth metals (lanthanum, praseodymium, cerium, promethium, neodymium, and samarium).

Rare earth metals and alloys that contain them are used in many devices that people use every day such as computer memory, DVDs, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, catalytic converters, magnets, fluorescent lighting and much more. The global demand for automobiles, consumer electronics, energy-efficient lighting, and catalysts is expected to rise rapidly over the next decade. Rare earth magnet demand is expected to increase, as is the demand for rechargeable batteries. New developments in medical technology are expected to increase the use of surgical lasers, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography scintillation detectors.

Lanthanum, praseodymium, cerium, neodymium, samarium, promethium, europium, dysprosium, holmium, gadolinium, terbium, thulium, scandium, yttrium, erbium, ytterbium, lutetium and others are the key product segments of the rare earth metal market. Cerium oxide dominated the global rare earth metal market owing to strong demand from catalyst market. Cerium oxide accounted for around 40% share of the total rare earth metal market in 2014. Lanthanum is expected to be the fastest growing segment of rare earth metal market during the forecast period. This can be attributed to the rapidly growing demand for rare earth metal in car batteries and different electronics appliances. However, other products of rare earth metals like neodymium, samarium, promethium, europium, dysprosium etc., are also expected to exhibit robust growth between 2015 and 2020.

On the basis of applications rare earth metal market can be segmented as magnets, catalyst, metallurgy, ceramics, phosphors, glass, and polishing. Magnet was the largest application market for rare earth metals and accounted for around 21% of the total rare earth metal volume consumed in 2014. Strong economical growth in emerging economies and support from governments has resulted into rapid growth in manufacturing of high technology products like tablet computers, TVs, advanced military technology, nuclear batteries, laser repeaters, miniature, superconductors, numerous medical devices, and rechargeable batteries. This in turn expected to drive the demand for rare earth metals, especially in Asia Pacific region. This in turn resulted into strong growth of rare earth metal in Asia Pacific region, especially in China. Strong growth prospectus of global wind turbine and automotive industry is also expected to boost demand for rare earth metals in the near future. Catalysts and metallurgy also accounted for significant share of the global rare earth metals market.